I have finished many features of the FTP protocol, and have shifted my attention temporarily to implementing the graphical UI system for the client, while X-FI6 is still working on the updateclient. When he's done with it's GUI, I can start implementing it's network features. For the time being we are using DirectX for graphics support on the client, because none of us really have any experience with OpenGL. But the ultimate goal is to have support for both OpenGL and DirectX, as well as cross-platform support. So far I haven't rendered anything, but I am working on parsing the game's UI scripts, so that a UI screen can be created automatically by providing a path to a UI script. We are still actively looking for more developers, so if you read this and you know you'd be able to help, please don't hesitate to let us know!
I've been focusing on making FARDive so I can learn if I'm ever wrong about my guesses in any of my code. (For example, we're assuming right now that a byte in one of EA's formats means the Out-of-Bounds character, without having read it anywhere else on the Internet)
I don't know any OpenGL yet so I can't really help with the graphics. And even though the game is mostly isometric, the ground is one of the things that is not. So we cannot just use a 2D codebase for making the game because it simply won't work for attaching things to the ground once we go from a simple flat sandbox mode to a real Sims style of game.
So we are still waiting for developers and easy FAR extraction (via FARDive) before we create a working game engine. Instead, Afr0 is working on the update-distributing code still (it's amazing how awful the FTP specification is yet how widespread the protocol has become), and I've started recreating the TSO updater tool and writing FARDive.And here is Revision 1 of FARDive. (The source code will be provided once it becomes useful)
It is difficult for us to make dramatic updates without knowledge with OpenGL. I know I could learn it quickly with a simple specification with plenty of example code, but, that's not possible with OpenGL. The amount of example code done in DirectX is the same in OpenGL but written across SDL, SFML, GLFW, and freeglut, leaving only 25% for what you actually care about. Since SDL does not use hardware acceleration, and GLFW does not provide the features standard from OpenGL 1.4, that leaves us between SFML and freeglut. So, we have to wait for somebody experienced with OpenGL to teach us.
Although we're only focusing on Windows support for now, we also plan to support Linux, Mac OS X, and Android in the future.
(Original updates by Afr0 and X-Fi6)
Read the full article at Tsorestoration.com
